The invention relates to a container wall construction for a bomb-resistant airline baggage container for withstanding gas-expansion explosives.
The invention arose out of efforts to improve commercial airline safety, including making the commercial airline industry less vulnerable to terrorism by containing a blast of a bomb in luggage in the cargo hold of the airplane. In wide bodied jets, i.e. two aisles, passenger luggage is stored in a baggage container which in turn is stowed in the cargo hold of the airplane. Narrow bodied jets, i.e. single aisle, do not use containers to store luggage; instead, the luggage is stored directly in the cargo hold, without a container. If a baggage container were used in both narrow bodied and wide bodied jets, and if such baggage container were blast resistant, or at least could mitigate the effects of an explosion, then lives could be saved. The present invention provides container wall construction for bomb-resistant airline baggage containers for both wide bodied and narrow bodied jets.
In accordance with the present invention, it has been found that a construction of a core and a particular combination and sequencing of fiberglass layers provides a suitable blast resistant laminate composite container wall construction. Materials traditionally associated with bomb-resistance, such as Kevlar.RTM., were found unsuitable for various reasons, including temperature and fire resistance, difficulty in bonding to a core to provide a substantially rigid container wall, and manufacturability within reasonable cost. Fiberglass composites have traditionally not been associated with bomb-resistant applications. The combination in the present invention satisfies criteria particular to bomb-resistant airline baggage containers, including strength to weight ratio, stiffness to weight ratio, temperature and flammability resistance, impact and shock hole resistance, cost, manufacturability, and gas-expansion explosive withstand capability. The latter is significant in airline baggage containers because the clothing in the luggage will absorb and mitigate significant amounts of projectile energy, however there remains the need to withstand the destructive almost instantaneous pressure rise and shock wave from gas-expansion explosives, including plastic explosives.